Isle of the Lost (12 page)

No matter what Mal thinks.

Jay kicked a rock across the crumbling cobblestones, and an irritated cat howled back at him from the shadows.

She’s so full of it.

Mal wouldn’t admit it—their defeat—especially not when she was in a mood like tonight. Mal was so stubborn sometimes. Practically delusional. In moments like these, Jay had clearly seen the effects of a raised-by-a-maniacal-villain upbringing. He couldn’t blame Mal for not wanting to tell her mother no—nobody would—but really, there was no way that Maleficent’s scepter was somewhere on the Isle of the Lost, and even if it was, Jay and Mal would never find it.

Jay shook his head.

Eye of the Dragon? More like, Eye of Desperation.

That raven is bonkers, probably from being frozen for twenty years.

He shrugged and rounded the corner to his own street. He tried to forget about it, half-expecting (and half-hoping) Mal would probably do the same. She had her whims, but they never seemed to last. That was the good thing about Mal; she would get all worked up about something, but totally drop it the next day. They got along because Jay had learned to just ride out the storm.

When he finally made his way through the last of the puzzle of stolen locks, chains, and deadbolts that guarded his own house (thieves being the most paranoid about burglary), he pushed the rotting wooden door open with a creak and crept inside.

One foot at a time. Shift your body weight as you step. Stick close to the wall….

“Jay? Is that you?”

Crap.

His father was still awake, cooking eggs, his faithful parrot, Iago, on his shoulder. Was Jafar worried about his only son being out so late? Was he worried about where he’d been, or who he’d been with, or why he hadn’t come home until now?

Nah.
His father had only one thing on his mind, and Jay knew exactly what it was.

“What’s tonight’s haul?” Jafar asked greedily, as he set his plate of food down on the kitchen table, next to a pile of rusty coins that passed for currency on the island. The table was where Jafar practiced his favorite hobby: counting his money. There was a good-sized pyramid of coins on the table, but Jay knew it wouldn’t satisfy Jafar’s greed.

Nothing did.

“Nice pajamas.” Jay smirked. The trick with his father was to keep moving, to stay on your toes, and above all else, to avoid answering the question, because none of the answers were ever right. When you couldn’t win, you shouldn’t give in and play. That was just setting yourself up for disaster.

I mean, my dad’s best friend is a parrot.

Enough said.

“Nice pajamas!” Iago squawked. “Nice pajamas!”

Jafar was wearing a faded bathrobe over saggy pajamas with little lamps printed all over them. If twenty years of being frozen could turn a raven cuckoo, twenty years of life among the lost had done just as much to diminish the former Grand Vizier of Agrabah’s infamy, along with his grandeur and panache (at least, that was how his father thought of it). Gone were the sumptuous silks and plush velvet jackets, replaced by a uniform of ratty velour sweat suits and sweat-stained undershirts that smelled a little too strongly of their shop’s marketplace stand, which was located, rather unfortunately and quite directly across from the horse stalls.

The sleek black beard was now raggedy and gray, and there was the aforementioned gut. Iago had taken to calling him “the sultan,” since Jafar now resembled his old adversary in size; although, in all fairness, Iago himself looked like he was on a daily cracker binge.

In return, Jafar called his feathered pal things that were unrepeatable by any standard, even a parrot’s.

Jay hated his father’s pajamas: they were a sign of how far their once royalty-adjacent family had fallen. The flannel was worn so thin in places you could see Jafar’s belly roll beneath it. Jay tried not to look too closely, even now, in the shadows of the early morning light.

His father ignored the pajama insults. He’d heard them all before. He wolfed down his midnight snack with relish without offering Jay a bite. “Come on, come on, get on with it. What’d we get? Let’s have a look.”

Jay eyed his carpet roll at the end of the room, beyond the table—but he also knew there was no way of getting past his father now. He reluctantly unpacked his pockets. “Broken glass slipper, got it from one of the step-granddaughters. With some glue, we could get a good price for it.” The cracked, heel-less slipper shattered into a pile of glass shards the moment it hit the table. Jafar raised an eyebrow.

“Um, superglue?” Jay kept going. “One of Lucifer’s collars, Rick Ratcliffe’s pistol keychain—and look, a real glass eye!” It was covered in lint. “It’s only a little used. I got it from one of the pirates.” He held it up to his own eye and peered through the glass—then jerked it away, wrinkling his nose and fanning his face with his hand. “Why don’t pirates ever bathe? Hello, it’s called a
shower
. It’s not like they’re even out at sea anymore.” With that, he rolled the eyeball across the table to his father.

Iago squawked curiously while Jay waited for the inevitable.

Jafar waved a dismissive hand over the items and sighed. “Garbage.”

“Garbage!” Iago shrieked. “Garbage!”

“But that’s all there is on this island,” Jay argued, leaning against the kitchen sink. “This is the Isle of the Lost, the Isle of the Leftovers, remember?”

His father frowned. “You went to the De Vil place, and you didn’t score a fur coat? What were you doing in there all night? Slobbering over Maleficent’s girl?”

Jay rolled his eyes. “For the ten-thousandth time,
no
. And it’s not like
I
was the one locked in the coat closet.” As he said it, he wondered why he hadn’t thought of that.

“You need to try harder! What about that princess? The one who’s just come out of the castle?”

“Oh yeah, her. I forgot.” Jay dug into his jeans pocket and brought out a silver necklace with a red poisoned-apple charm on it. “That’s all she had on her. I’m telling you, even the castles around this place are dumps.”

Jafar put on a pair of spectacles and examined the jewelry, squinting first with one eye, then with the other. His eyesight was going, and his back ached from the extra work of carrying around his own sweatsuited belly; even villains were not spared the perils of aging. “Paste and glass. In my day, a
servant
wouldn’t have worn that, let alone a princess. Not quite the big score we’re looking for.” He tossed the bauble aside, sighing as he stopped to feed Iago another cracker.

“Score,” said Iago, gleefully spitting cracker crumbs. “Big Score!”

Jay’s shoulders slumped.

The big score.

It was his father’s dream: that one day his only son would find a cachet of loot so big, so rich, so laden with gold, that Jafar would no longer have to preside over a junk shop, ever again. No matter that the Isle of the Lost was a floating rubbish heap; somehow Jafar believed the big score was always right around the corner—a bounty that could transport him back to his rightful place as a sorcerer, with all its power and trappings.

Talk about delusional.

Even if it did exist, could such a treasure take any of them back in time to a better day, or free them from a lifetime of imprisonment? As if an object or a jewel or any amount of gold coins could fix the mess that people like Jafar had gotten them all into, in the first place?

The big score.
His father was as crazy as Mal had been tonight. Jay shook his head.

And then he just shook. Because he’d thought of something.

Hang on.

What had Mal told him tonight? That the raven believed Maleficent’s scepter, the Dragon’s Eye, was hidden somewhere on this island? If Diablo was telling the truth, and Jay was able to find it, it would be the biggest score of the year. Of the century! He thought it through. Was it possible? Could it be
that
easy? Could his father have been right to hold on to the faintest hope for something better, even after all these years?

Nah.

Jay rubbed his eyes. It had been a long night. There was no way that thing was on the Isle of the Lost. There was nothing of power here—not when it came to people, and not when it came to their stuff.

And even if it
was
here—however unlikely that might be—the dome over the island kept out all magic out. The Dragon’s Eye was just a fancy name for a walking stick now. Like he’d told Mal, it was a useless enterprise. They were better off trying to hijack a boat out of the Goblin Wharf back to Auradon. Not that any of them would want to live there.

Maybe we
belong
on the Isle of the Lost, Leftover, and Forgotten. Maybe that’s how this story is supposed to go.

Only, who’s going to break the news to my dad?

Jay watched as his father returned to stacking the coins in neat piles. Counting coins gave him peace in some way his son would never understand. Jafar was whistling, and looked up when he saw Jay staring at him.

“Remember the Golden Rule?” his father purred as he caressed the money with his hands.

“Totally. ’Night, Dad,” Jay said, heading to the worn carpet underneath the shelves in the back, where he slept.
Whoever has the most gold makes the rules.
It’s what his father believed, and while Jay had never seen any gold in his life, he’d been taught to believe it too.

He just wasn’t sure that he believed there was any gold to find. Not on the Isle of the Lost. Still, as he curled up on the hard bit of carpeted floor that was his bed, he tried to imagine what it would feel like to find it.

The Big Score
.

He fell asleep dreaming of his father bursting with pride in a pair of pajamas made of gold.

C
ruella was going to kill him if she ever found out he’d thrown a party while she was away. People on the island kept telling him Cruella had mellowed with age, that she was rounder and less shouty, but they didn’t have to live with her.

Cruella De Vil’s son knew his mother better than anyone.

If his mother had any idea that he’d let a bunch of people come over…and even worse, let anyone even come
near
her fur closet—let alone
inside
it—let alone be tackled in a pile of full-length grade-A–pelt coats—well, let’s just say it wouldn’t be a puppy she would be trying to skin.

But thankfully his mother was still at the Spa and hadn’t returned unexpectedly as she was wont to do sometimes, if only to keep her son and Jasper and Horace on their minion-y toes.

Carlos stumbled out of bed and found a few bleary-eyed guests wandering around Hell Hall, smelling like last night’s spicy cider. “You’re probably looking for the bathroom. This way. No problem!” He shoved them out the front door before they could realize what was happening. As he did, Harry and Jace, the two young, second-generation De Vil minions who had helped him decorate for the party, stumbled out of the ballroom with crepe paper in their hair.

“’Morning,” said Carlos, his voice still froggy with sleep. “Why are you wearing the party?”

“I told him not to get me tangled up in his stupid streamers,” Harry said, still surly.

“
You
told me? You were the one playing tag all night, dragging half the decorations around after you.”

“I was entertaining guests.”

“Then why was no one playing
with
you?”

As usual, there was no hope of real conversation with either of them. Carlos gave up.

His cousin Diego De Vil gave him a thumbs-up from the couch. “Great party. Total howler!” The rest of the band was packing up their gear.

“Thanks, I think.” Carlos wrinkled his nose. The gloomy morning light made everything look sadder and more sordid. Even the chandelier’s candles had burnt down to stubs, and someone had broken the rope swing so that it swayed gently, brushing the floor.

“We’d better get out of here so you can clean up.” Diego grinned. “Or did your mom say to leave it for her to do when she got home?” He burst out laughing.

“Very funny.” Carlos ignored his cousin, pushing his way through the swinging door that led to the kitchen. He was hungry, his head hurt, and he hadn’t slept well—dreaming anxiously of keeping the party a secret from his mother, but also of the dazzling light that had emanated from his machine and hit the dome.

Did that really happen?

For a moment there, Carlos thought he had felt something in the air. Something wild and electric and thrumming with energy.
Magic? Could it be?

He wondered if he could make the machine do it again.

After breakfast.

He poked his head into the kitchen, which looked like a party bomb had exploded. Every counter and surface was sticky and littered with cups, bowls, bits of popcorn and chips, rotten deviled eggs, uneaten devil dogs, and empty bottles of cider. His feet stuck and unstuck with every step on the floor, ripping up and down with a noise that was part Velcro, part pseudopod. He took a broom and began to sweep and clean, just enough so that he could get to the fridge and the shelves.